A correction was made to a story in a local Berkeley newspaper after concerns arose that an alleged murderer had been misgendered in the reporter’s article.
Police identified 22-year-old Pablo Gomez Jr. of North Hollywood as the wanted suspect after reports came in from a woman who had been violently stabbed north of the UC Berkeley campus on Friday. Police reports say Gomez Jr. was the primary suspect for both the stabbing and a homicide that occurred in Berkeley, earlier on Friday.
According to his Facebook page, Gomez is a student at UC Berkeley. One of Gomez’s friends reached out to Berkeleyside, the independent newspaper who covered the incident, to express concern over the article’s use of male gender pronouns. The friend claimed the Gomez Jr. preferred to be addressed by the gender-neutral pronoun “they.”
Police have identified the wanted person as 24-year-old Pablo Gomez Jr. of North Hollywood. According to Gomez Jr.’s Facebook page, they are a UC Berkeley student who lives in Berkeley. [A friend contacted Berkeleyside after publication to say that Gomez Jr. uses the pronoun “they.” This story has been updated.]
According to the report, Gomez Jr., a “Chicanx/Latinx Studies” major at UC Berkeley, participated in a lot of the progressive activism that took place at the university.
Gomez Jr. has been involved with UC Berkeley’s Queer Alliance Resource Center, according to the group’s Facebook page, and recently helped organize a chalk protest on campus related to sexual assault, the Daily Californian reported in September.
Gomez Jr. is studying “Chicanx/Latinx Studies” according to their Facebook page, and is a senior climate action fellow at Alliance for Climate Education.
Gomez Jr. is now in the custody of Berkeley police department.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about social justice and libertarian issues for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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